Dark City (1998) Critic Reviews

A great visionary achievement, a film so original and exciting, it stirred my imagination like "Metropolis" and "2001: A Space Odyssey."Read the full review

It's a little short on coherence and long on comic-book sensationalism -- dig the hokey, climactic Battle of the Minds between the hero and a cadaverous Mr. Big -- but there's no denying the nightmarish pull of the film's aesthetic.Read the full review

Proyas is trying simultaneously to create a pure thriller and sci-fi nightmare along with his tongue-in-cheek critique of artifice. And this doesn't work out quite so well.Read the full review

Dark City has as stunning a visual texture as that of any movie that I've seen...Visually, this film isn't just impressive, it's a tour de force.Read the full review

Dark City grabs your eyeballs and squeezes.Read the full review

So relentlessly trippy in a fun-house sort of way that it could very easily inspire a daredevil cult of moviegoers who go back again and again to experience its mind-bending twists and turns. Although its story doesn't add up when you analyze it afterward, the movie does take you on a visually arresting ride that offers many unsettling surprises right up to a sentimental sunburst of an ending that has a paranoid undertone.Read the full review

Fascinating, visionary filmmaking. With its amber-tinged palette and its distinctively dystopian view of life, it may be the most unique-looking film we've seen in ages...[but] defies logic and makes frightening and unexpected leaps.Read the full review

What they have done is taken a few second-hand ideas from noir and speculative fiction and mixed them in occasionally striking ways, even if, in the end, the result isn't all that much fun.Read the full review

Obliged to go from lost soul to demigod, Sewell's performance is as fascinating as Proyas's mystical vision.Read the full review